Hillcrest Avenue, Louisville, KY

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 5-30-20*

Signal on the far left: 2 pairs of WCH 8 inch lights, 1 pair of Federal Signal 8 inch lights, a WRRS mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the near left: 1 WCH 8 inch light and 1 Modern Industries 8 inch light.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Federal Signal 8 inch lights, a GRS/WRRS gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.
This crossing is located in a quiet zone. Trains do not blow their horns at this crossing.

After catching Q688, I went over to Osburn Yard to watch Q574 build their train and start to leave, so I made my way on over to this crossing to catch them. And when I got here, I didn't have to wait too long before Q574 came on through with an ES44AH leading an ES40DC and a GP38-2 on the head-end, with an CM44AH rebuild working as the mid-train DPU.

This crossing is another pretty nice one. It appears that this was originally a WRRS install from the L&N back in either the 50s or 60s. However, like the other crossings along this part of the LCL Subdivision, it appears that the L&N replaced all of the gateless masts here with newer ones (which they likely all had Federal Signal 8 inch lights originally) in the 1970s, but they re-used the bell. It also appears that a few years later on, the L&N replaced a few of the lights here with newer ones, likely as the older ones got struck.
Since then, the only major change to occur here was that the original GRS/WRRS gate mech on the far side was replaced with a Safetran gate mech sometime in the 2000s by CSX. Thankfully, the classic crossing remains unchanged otherwise, which, IMHO, is quite nice to see.